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Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Amazon Spam Generates Traffic for Illegal Drug Sites

Spammers are quite the magical beings.

Not only can they disguise the origin of an email, but they can also travel through time!

I’m only kidding, but it is an entertaining thought, especially if you’ve received a confirmation email from Amazon saying that an order placed tomorrow was canceled today. Yes, you read that right.

Cybercrooks have begun spamming out yet another phony email in order to direct users to pharmaceutical websites. This time the emails are masquerading as Amazon cancellation notices:

From: order-update@amazon.com (order-update@amazondestruct.com)Subject: Your order 14-225-94971 has been successfully canceled

Your order has been successfully canceled. For your reference, here's a summary of your order:

You just canceled order 14-225-94971 placed on May 2, 2012.

Status: CANCELED

_____________________________________________________________________

1 "Micronesia"; 2008, Special EditionBy: Gwendolen Moore

Sold by: Amazon.com LLC

_____________________________________________________________________

Thank you for visiting Amazon.com!

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Amazon.comEarth's Biggest Selectionhttp://www.amazon.com

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Clearly tinkering with time has knocked the spammer off their game, as the [canceled] order date is set for May 2nd when it's still only May 1st (at least where I live). Not only that, but the email arrived far too early - even with a forged header saying it arrived 7 hours later.

That’s aside from an item that could not be found on Amazon, but hey… I’m sure the cybercrook wasn’t expecting a recipient to spot such slip-ups.

What to do with Amazon Spam

If you happen to receive an email similar to the one shown above, it’s recommended that you:

Update 5/2/12: Since writing this, I've received two more of these emails, but with a different subject: "Amazon.com - Your Cancellation (XXX-XXX-XXXX). The rest of the email is pretty much the same with the exception of the item, which varies from email to email. How many of these emails have cluttered your inbox?

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